Yeah, the toys thing is actually pretty positive. The hairdresser thing seems silly, they should be charging based on the skill required to create the haircut/difficulty or time required.

Yeah, and I've frankly got my doubts about it. Never heard anything about it on national media and the author isn't sourcing it, so it might as well be something he either pulled out of his proverbial behind or twisted from something incredibly circumstanstial (like one specific hairdresser being disallowed from charging differently for the same operation on two people).

PvE:er to the bone. Plays a druid. Also plays DotA and a whole bunch of other stuff. Listens to mostly everything.

"We actually contracted out the creation of the equally-epic-yet-non-loot-dropping-non-boss mobs in Throne of Thunder to a giant snail. I think he did a pretty good job."

Edit: I'm having a hard time to believe that you (as a born and ethnic Swede?) is allowed to have a controversy opinion on immigration/well-fare or equality issues?

You have to realize that the only people that take offense to my opinions are communists, and frankly, communists can be brushed off easily. My muslim mates thinks it's weird that we ethnic Swedes have problems with showing our patriotism.

I wasn't joking when I shared your sentiments when you mentioned Norrköping. Norrköping is a fucking commie hole, and no man with any kind of dignity should have to live there.

Yeah, and I've frankly got my doubts about it. Never heard anything about it on national media and the author isn't sourcing it, so it might as well be something he either pulled out of his proverbial behind or twisted from something incredibly circumstanstial (like one specific hairdresser being disallowed from charging differently for the same operation on two people).

Nah this is actually law, has been since 2005 or something like that, it's nothing new, it doesn't exactly get enforced to any meaningful degree either btw.

You are not allowed to charge different prices for a male/female as long as you provide the same service, as I mentioned above though, quite common to just charge differently based on hair length for example, and extra service, for example hair extensions is a separate service.

Last edited by Jackmoves; 2012-11-28 at 12:01 AM.

The nerve is called the "nerve of awareness". You cant dissect it. Its a current that runs up the center of your spine. I dont know if any of you have sat down, crossed your legs, smoked DMT, and watch what happens... but what happens to me is this big thing goes RRRRRRRRRAAAAAWWW! up my spine and flashes in my brain... well apparently thats whats going to happen if I do this stuff...

Man, this is insane. Does anyone think this Cultural Marxism? Why aren't these men and women allowed to express themselves as they wish without being called a bigot or privileged? Sure, nobody should be discriminated against and it shouldn't be encouraged, but stuff like this seems....inhuman. It doesn't matter which country these sorts of things take place in, as the principles behind these policies ought to be attacked. Free expression is being silenced under the guise of egalitarianism.

something tells me you don't know what marxism is, when you imply this is cultural marxism.

Boys now pucker up to the camera clutching baby dolls. Girls wave guns at the reader to reassure us that females can be violent too.

As a Swedish male I feel more persecuted for being a man then for my actual views. Any valid argumentation around the subject of feminism is now ignored with contempt.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against gender equality, but It's going over the line when you don't let kids be kids.

The nerve is called the "nerve of awareness". You cant dissect it. Its a current that runs up the center of your spine. I dont know if any of you have sat down, crossed your legs, smoked DMT, and watch what happens... but what happens to me is this big thing goes RRRRRRRRRAAAAAWWW! up my spine and flashes in my brain... well apparently thats whats going to happen if I do this stuff...

Edit: Although the UN projections of Sweden's HDI are kind of curious (world ranking):

2015: 25
2020: 25
2025: 37
2030: 45 (Libya one place above it o.O)

It took awhile to write and find sources for this post, so I apologize if this seem out of context and a bit OT.
Our economy is going down the crapper as we speak. There are so much to be covered to fully explain Sweden's current situation, I can't hope to do it in one night. So this post could potentially become endless and I'm therefor going to dumb it down a bit.

-Economy-
Basically what's happening in Sweden is that more and more kids educate themselves in markets that's already filled, with government tax money. This doesn't do our country any favors when there are 300 educated stylists/IT technicians and Archaeologists and only 2-3 available jobs for those 300 stylists/IT technicians and Archaeologists to fight for. So what happens? Some of these highly(expensively) educated people move abroad where there are jobs to be found. Some of them have to return to the school bench and educate for a different job, requiring even more government funding and precious time not being productive.

This results in a huge depression in other markets (Construction/Factories/Cleaning etc). There aren't enough educated Swedish people to fill these spots. So we have to fill out the rest with Immigrant workers (Not to be confused with Refugees or Immigrants with Swedish Citizenship). These people cost NOTHING compared to a Swedish worker who has facket(The union) at his back, always pushing for higher salaries and better conditions. We are not willing or allowed to do 16hour days with minimum wages under piss poor conditions, but they are!

So we can't compete with these people, where do our newly educated youth go? The employment office(AF) of course!
At the employment office you get a choice. Join JGU or continue your studies, or you get left out from society.
Most people will join JGU as it guarantees you a job and higher welfare. Which brings me to the next point, payroll taxes.

What did our government do to motivate companies to take in all these new unemployed youths?
They reduced payroll tax for the first 6 months of employment if employers go through the employment office to find employees.
This would be helpful weren't it for the fact that the markets are already filled with immigrant workers doing the job cheaper.
Instead of creating more jobs, they created an elaborate slave market where companies "employ" youth for 6 months and then let them go to once again get reduced payroll tax. This doesn't generate any jobs or contribute to our country, it simply rotates one job spot around different individuals.

We have a few large industries that are strictly against this conduct and they'd rather see Swedish, fulltime employees instead of a part time/immigrant workforce. But they can't compete against these other companies. They are forced by our union to pay us high minimum wages and constantly improve conditions. They are therefor forced to either sell to foreign buyers or cut down their workforce to compensate for the ruthless competition. This can already be seen with the most recent layoffs by SAPA and Siemens. So this doesn't effect youth exclusively anymore, but the entire market.

That is one reason for that HDI report. We're heading down a road we can't hope to go back.

-Politics-

Ontop of that we have politicians who are so deluded and offensive it's not even funny.
These are some of the gems uttered by these noble politicians throughout the recent decennium:

Mona Sahlin (Formed head of SAP)- "I believe that's what makes so many swedes jealous by immigrant groups. You have culture, identity, history and something that connects you. And what do we have? Midsummer and corny stuff like that."

Fredrik Reinfeldt(Current prime minister)- "The old sweden is just savagery. Remainder of the development has come from outside."

These quotes(and other equally idiotic quotes) are praised and applauded by media and therefor the people. It's absolutely disgusting that these people and their parties will get support from the public, scandalous and if it was anywhere else in the world, they'd be hung by the spine (If they had one). I don't need to do a lengthy explanation to why Swedish politics is a joke, this speaks for itself.

Don't believe me? I wouldn't be surprised it sounds like a bad joke. I'll give you sources and you can make up your own mind.

Nah this is actually law, has been since 2005 or something like that, it's nothing new, it doesn't exactly get enforced to any meaningful degree either btw.

You are not allowed to charge different prices for a male/female as long as you provide the same service, as I mentioned above though, quite common to just charge differently based on hair length for example, and extra service, for example hair extensions is a separate service.

Oh, so there was a law behind it. Still in that format it makes perfect sense, and it's really not in the same ballpark as what the Telegraph author tried to convey.

---------- Post added 2012-11-28 at 11:49 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Dre4m

As a Swedish male I feel more persecuted for being a man then for my actual views. Any valid argumentation around the subject of feminism is now ignored with contempt.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against gender equality, but It's going over the line when you don't let kids be kids.

Strange. I'm able to be a white male in this country debating the subject of feminism, and I don't feel persecuted or ignored for either. On the other hand, if I say something someone disagrees with, they'll gladly share and explain their viewpoint. Maybe it's just you, or maybe it's not persecution you feel but the act of not being agreed with.

Besides, how is letting kids choose what toys to play with instead of shoehorning them on opposite sides of a partition "[not letting] kids be kids"?

PvE:er to the bone. Plays a druid. Also plays DotA and a whole bunch of other stuff. Listens to mostly everything.

"We actually contracted out the creation of the equally-epic-yet-non-loot-dropping-non-boss mobs in Throne of Thunder to a giant snail. I think he did a pretty good job."

At first I was shocked to see Sweden so low on the list. Then I checked that our HDI would only shrink by 5% by that time, so it's not as doom and gloom as Jeavline says. Also, we have to note that it was made during 2009 where the economic recession had hit the hardest and the EU crisis really hadn't kicked in yet. Check where Greece is in comparison to Sweden in the 2015 list. That's right, 10 spots.

Jeavline, seriously, move out of Norrköping, Norrköping is the absolute asshole of Sweden. Of course it's all doom and gloom over there because it's filled with idiots. You'll find that more or less the rest of Sweden thinks Mona Sahlin is a fucking moron.

As for the economy, I think you underestimate students too much. Guess what class in my high school has the most students? The IT ones. What is the Swedish market in need of? IT people. If anything, it's looking more positive since IT is so intergrated within our society that more and more people want to do IT stuff instead of going a chef class, because they already have more knowledge of IT and thus their laziness ironically gets them more jobs. Yes, there are a lot of barbers, but they're going to end up either in the factory, or they have good grades enough in their class to go do something more productive in university, like becoming a teacher.

There are so much more information about this but it's getting late and I can't be bothered to find more sources and information.

TLDR & Edit: I should actually just have made a new thread instead of posting. This is completely irrelevant to the threads discussion.
It's too late now though.

Our economy is pretty fine(The baltics and Norway is pretty much the only ones that have us beat in Europe), in part due to having a relativly competative economy, and in part because we have quite strict fiscal policies, with an unbalanced budget amendment that has worked almost perfectly since we implemented it. The only thing I really think is worrysome at times is that there are people who borrow to maintain lifestyle(same problem in most western countries, consumption fueled by loaned money). But that trend is swinging around again, people are borrowing LESS, and saving more. Which is exactly what we want. Saving increased by 69 billions SEK(record high) the 2nd quarter this year, 15 billions the 3rd quarter(also relativly high, compared to the average). Savings are calculated by taking transactions in financial savings - transactions in loaned money. This is pretty brilliant numbers, we, as many other countries need to get away from borrowing to support private consumption, people need to learn to be more responsible with their own private economy, we are far from the worst when it comes to this though, and as I said, the trend is that people borrow less, and save more, exactly what I like to see. It does mean slightly less consumption of course, but it will make our economy, stronger and more stable in the long run.

A general rule for borrowing is to only borrow when it's a reasonable investment.

There are certainly things that could be corrected, and changed to the better, but overall our economy is quite ok, considering the situation Europe is in. We are an export based economy, we rely on our big trading partners(Germany, UK, USA, etc for example) and since a lot of our partners have been struggling I'm actually suprised we've managed to do as well as we have so far, we've remained quite productive(compared to most other European countries), kept our books in order and still managed to have "decent" employment rates(considering the crisis).

We can not compete in manufactoring(nor can any country in our position), nor should we waste too much time trying to, Medicine, biotech, financial services, IT, tech, etc thats were we need to shine, and thats markets we do fine in(esp medicine and financial services).

Youth unemployment is pretty high, esp compared to our Nordic neighbours or Germany, and this is probably the area were we need to do the most work. Got nothing to add here.

For Immigration, I'd like to refer to a previous post I made, it's a net loss for us atm, because unemployment is too high among foreign born, but immigration as such is not a negative thing as long as we can get them employed, it's an asset.

Nothing to add on politicians, there are some wackos, and some I like and support.

Cheers!

Btw the HDI, even if we would drop that low, we would still be a country considered to have "very high"(same as now) HDI. Not to mention, that the report was based on old methods, which no longer applies.

Last edited by Jackmoves; 2012-11-28 at 10:08 AM.

The nerve is called the "nerve of awareness". You cant dissect it. Its a current that runs up the center of your spine. I dont know if any of you have sat down, crossed your legs, smoked DMT, and watch what happens... but what happens to me is this big thing goes RRRRRRRRRAAAAAWWW! up my spine and flashes in my brain... well apparently thats whats going to happen if I do this stuff...

Btw the HDI, even if we would drop that low, we would still be a country considered to have "very high"(same as now) HDI. Not to mention, that the report was based on old methods, which no longer applies.

I know that you'd still be "very high" but it's curious to see how much other countries are expected to grow concerning HDI. Oh, and all of those countries, in all 5 of the tables, are the ones that are estimated to be the "very high" HDI countries at that point in time.

I know that you'd still be "very high" but it's curious to see how much other countries are expected to grow concerning HDI. Oh, and all of those countries, in all 5 of the tables, are the ones that are estimated to be the "very high" HDI countries at that point in time.

Yeah

But it's also based on old methodology, Sweden was supposed to be 15th, 2010(was 10th), and at 25th place in 3 years(need to drop 15 spots for that to happen). So it's not written in stone!

Also these projections are based on the old methodology for calculating the HDI value of a country. The 2010 Human Development Report, which was published in November 2010 (after this research papers was published), introduced a new methodology for calculating the HDI. Therefore these projections are inaccurate to compare to current HDI values.

The nerve is called the "nerve of awareness". You cant dissect it. Its a current that runs up the center of your spine. I dont know if any of you have sat down, crossed your legs, smoked DMT, and watch what happens... but what happens to me is this big thing goes RRRRRRRRRAAAAAWWW! up my spine and flashes in my brain... well apparently thats whats going to happen if I do this stuff...

I don't have a problem with the gender-neutral catalog as long as the government didn't make them do it.

The hair cut thing is fucking retarded. The government has no business telling them how much they can charge--and haircut prices should be based on the amount of hair the person has/what sort of cut they're getting, not their gender.

Women topless in public? I can support that. It's always been a double standard that the girls had to cover up their girls.

I honestly don't see the problem. The only thing I dislike is that pregnancy is considered a disease or something (as the article says, not sure if true). Otherwise, it's good. Men and women shouldn't be forced to be something just because they're men and women. When I was little we didn't have much money for toys, so I played with the ones my mother and grandmother had, dolls. As a boy. So what? I grew up ok, I like women so you can't say playing with dolls made my gay or something... I honestly don't see the problem.

And yes, salaries between men and women should be equalled for same education and experience, same salary, there shouldn't be a different one among genders. As for the rapes... well, rapes shouldn't happen at all, so no comment there.

I honestly don't see the problem. The only thing I dislike is that pregnancy is considered a disease or something (as the article says, not sure if true). Otherwise, it's good. Men and women shouldn't be forced to be something just because they're men and women. When I was little we didn't have much money for toys, so I played with the ones my mother and grandmother had, dolls. As a boy. So what? I grew up ok, I like women so you can't say playing with dolls made my gay or something... I honestly don't see the problem.

And yes, salaries between men and women should be equalled for same education and experience, same salary, there shouldn't be a different one among genders. As for the rapes... well, rapes shouldn't happen at all, so no comment there.

As said, the article is filled with strawman-stuff. The article he linked said that the pregnant women didn't get any health compensation despite being unable to work

I don't have a problem with the gender-neutral catalog as long as the government didn't make them do it.

The hair cut thing is fucking retarded. The government has no business telling them how much they can charge--and haircut prices should be based on the amount of hair the person has/what sort of cut they're getting, not their gender.

Women topless in public? I can support that. It's always been a double standard that the girls had to cover up their girls.

Just for the sake of repetition (it has been mentioned before, but I understand if you've only read the article you could easily get the wrong impression), they're specifically disallowed from charging genders differently for the same procedure; i.e., if a man and a woman with identical hair get the same treatment done to it, they should be charged equally. Charging based on elapsed working time as you're suggesting is in fact a common practice and perfectly legal. :>

PvE:er to the bone. Plays a druid. Also plays DotA and a whole bunch of other stuff. Listens to mostly everything.

"We actually contracted out the creation of the equally-epic-yet-non-loot-dropping-non-boss mobs in Throne of Thunder to a giant snail. I think he did a pretty good job."